Tag Archives | Poland

In this video Luke Rudkowski is in Warsaw, Poland and talks to Maciek Ziolkowski, the founder of the Bitcoin Embassy. They talk about what’s going on with bitcoin, the start of the center in Poland and the future of regulations in Europe.

Today in New York City, the former presidents of Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Poland, Portugal and Switzerland join with Kofi Annan and others to call for the end of drug criminalization. They are also calling for legal and regulated use of psychoactive substances. This press conference is being held at 9:45 AM by the Global Commission on Drug Policy:

Today, the Global Commission on Drug Policy will release Taking Control: Pathways to Drug Policies that Work, a new, groundbreaking report at a press conference in New York City. The event will be live-streamed and speakers include former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, former Colombian President César Gaviria, former Swiss President Ruth Dreifuss, Richard Branson and others.

The Commissioners will then meet with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and UN Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson in the afternoon following the press conference.

A plane crash at Smolensk in Russia four years ago wiped out the Warsaw leadership. It used to be seen as an accident. Now, after Putin’s games in Ukraine, people aren’t so sure.

Four years ago this week, Polish President Lech Kaczynski was killed in a plane crash near the Katyn Forest in Russia where he was flying to honor the 22,000 Polish officers, lawyers, priests and professors slaughtered there by the Soviets 70 years before. Ninety-five other military, political and public figures including his wife died on that plane. One of the more heartbreaking details to emerge was that First Lady Maria Kaczynska’s body could be identified only by her nail polish and the inscription inside her wedding ring.

Laurent Bouzereau’s Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir features the eponymous director in conversation with his longtime friend and producer, Andrew Braunsberg – the pair have known one another since 1964. With that kind of bare-bones conceptualizing it might not come as a surprise to learn that Bouzereau’s bread and butter as a director has been creating extras for DVD’s. Watching filmmakers discuss their work for five minutes, behind-the-scenes, can be entertaining – even illuminating. But an hour and a half of the stuff could try the patience. Fortunately for Bouzereau – and his viewers – Polanski is funny, insightful and eloquent when discussing a life few of us could fathom.

The discussion was filmed during Polanski’s house arrest in Gstaad, Switzerland, in 2009. The director was threatened with extradition to the U.S. to face his infamous sexual misconduct charges dating to 1977. We learn the clandestine details of Polanski’s arrest before he recounts his childhood, growing up in a Jewish ghetto in Nazi-occupied Krakow, Poland.… Read the rest

Archaeologists in Gliwice, southern Poland have discovered a burial ground where the dead were laid to rest in accordance with practices for alleged vampires. Four skeletons were found at the site, where mandatory digs were being carried out prior to the construction of a ring road.

In each case, the deceased had been buried with the head between the legs. According to folk beliefs, this prevented a possible vampire from finding his or her way back to the land of the living.

“It’s very difficult to tell when these burials were carried out,” archaeologist Dr. Jacek Pierzak told the Dziennik Zachodni newspaper. However, it is believed that they took place in the early modern period.

The last recorded instance of a vampire burial within current Polish borders was in Stare Mierzwice, Masovia, in 1914. A corpse was dug up in the village [with] its head cut off and placed between the legs.

Richard Cottrell, a former journalist and Conservative Member of the European Parliament (MEP) whose investigations led to the release of a Greek man falsely accused of murder, is out with a new book, Gladio: NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe. In a recent interview with the website parapolitical that touched on a variety of topics, he gave a hint on the subject of his next work. In it, he will discuss the 1980s penetration of Poland’s Solidarity movement by NATO intelligence services and his own investigations into the Alliance’s involvement in guiding Poland toward ever closer EU integration and possible hand in the “accidental” crash of the Polish presidential plane in 2010:

For me this is an especially interesting question because I formerly lived and worked in Poland for some years and also spent time in Bulgaria, Russia, Estonia and the Ukraine. I have an unpublished work (lack of time) entitled Holy Ghosts: How the CIA Hi-Jacked the Polish Revolution.

A Polish firm that makes coffins has angered the Catholic church by trying to drum up business with a calendar depicting topless models posing next to its caskets.

One image from the 2013 edition of the calendar has a blonde model, wearing only a skimpy thong and with a snake draped around her neck, reclining on a coffin. In another, a woman wearing a crimson corset is depicted pulling out the heart of a man lying on a casket.

“My son had the idea of creating the company’s calendar… so that we could show something half-serious, colorful, beautiful; the beauty of Polish girls and the beauty of our coffins,” said Zbigniew Lindner, the firm’s owner.

“We wanted to show that a coffin isn’t a religious symbol. Its a product,” he said. “Why are people afraid of coffins and not of business suits, cosmetics or jewelry?”

Exorcists in Eastern Europe now have their own monthly trade publication. Via the Star:

With exorcism booming in Poland, Roman Catholic priests here have joined forces with a publisher to launch what they claim is the world’s first monthly magazine focused exclusively on chasing out the devil.

“The rise in the number or exorcists from four to more than 120 over the course of 15 years in Poland is telling,” Father Aleksander Posacki told reporters in Warsaw at the Monday launch of the Egzorcysta monthly.

Ironically, he attributed the rise in demonic possessions in what remains one of Europe’s most devoutly Catholic nations partly to the switch from atheist communism to free market capitalism in 1989. “It’s indirectly due to changes in the system: capitalism creates more opportunities to do business in the area of occultism.”

I made a definite decision to suspend the ratification process of ACTA – said Prime Minister Donald Tusk today. – It is not enough – a lawyer immediately commented Peter Waglowski (Vagla). – Signature of the international agreement itself is the “concreting” normative discussion in Poland.

Tusk admitted that during the consultation ws. ACTA represents the interests of the environment and point of view of Internet users were not adequately represented and consulted with organizations primarily associated with broadcasters and creators.

Tusk promises to open debate

– We need to make sure that ACTA is one hundred percent safe for the citizens – said the Prime Minister. – Until you explain yourself all the questions, so long will be suspended the ratification process of ACTA and can not be excluded that in the final will mean a lack of acceptance for this contract – he added.